Dauman, a friend acknowledges, is partying as hard as ever. Though he's grown sick of the scene in San Francisco, Dauman spends freely to find fun elsewhere, jetting to Vegas some weekends to party with his New Yorker girlfriend at events with a around four females for every male. (This is a new girlfriend; the dominatrix Dauman was said dating is history.)

Dauman's also returned to New York on a near-monthly basis, including for Fashion Week in February, and this summer to his parents' vacation home in East Hampton.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Or so we're told. But Dauman's hedonism doesn't seem to have affected his work. Though his side gig, a music startup, appears defunct, the Columbia JD and MBA got a promotion at Google last month, from "Strategic Partner Development Associate" to "Strategic Partner Development Manager." (See the excerpt from Dauman's LinkedIn profile at left.)

Presumably this means Dauman will have more responsibility around local content acquisition, as his father has described his job. This could help sell his bosses on a New York move; AOL, the New York Times and Huffington Post are all duking out in the city and surrounding markets for local news website dominance.

It certainly wouldn't be Dauman's first time finagling an advantageous transfer. Below, Dauman Sr., well-to-do CEO of Viacom, describes how no less a negotiator than Google chief Eric Schmidt was persuaded to hire Dauman Jr., despite the Viacom suit.

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.

[video via]

Nonsense. How typically self-important of Internet users, to think that Viacom cares about the dozens of South Park videos they watched. Viacom is not being disingenuous in saying it never meant to violate Internet users' privacy, I've come to believe.

So why are they seeking the data? The case revolves around the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which gives Internet service providers a "safe harbor" for hosting copyrighted content. But that protection rests on the notion that the people who operate a website don't really know what's on it.

If Viacom can show YouTube cofounders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, or other top officials, viewed copyrighted content while logged into the site, wouldn't that weaken YouTube's rights under the DMCA? Even worse, what if Hurley or Chen uploaded copyrighted clips themselves?

Tellingly, in reaching a deal to protect YouTube users' privacy, Viacom and Google excluded data about YouTube and Google employees' use of the site.

Google's best defense might be to go negative, airing reports about Viacom executives' use of the site. That might not give YouTube any more legal protection — but it would make its legal foes squirm. Viacom's Ifilm subsidiary, for one, has been caught hosting copyrighted content without permission.

There's one thing that might save Chad and Steve: They've never seemed that interested in online video. The pair, both former PayPal employees, stumbled onto the idea, and conceived of YouTube first as a site to host shopping videos for eBay listings, then as a video-dating site. They've always been more interested in cynically exploiting online video as a business than exploring the potential of the medium. An announcement of Google's sale to YouTube is one of the few times the two actually made an appearance on it.

So there's the irony: The less Chad and Steve used YouTube, the more likely they'll come out of this lawsuit unscathed. But Viacom's legal strategy suggests that every video they viewed will count against them.

• Does the fact that you're screening Tropic Thunder for a bunch of local tech reporters rather than the usual film critics suggest that you're not particularly confident in the film's critical reception?
• How will the lost $450 million financing deal for a slate of movies that would have included Tropic Thunder affect your Paramount movie studio?
• Why do you keep making poor Jeremy Zweig tell reporters that your lawyers didn't ask for YouTube users' personal information when you did, in fact, ask for their usernames and IP addresses — information most Internet users would consider personal? And what's he supposed to say now that you've agreed to mask them?
• Isn't Viacom's investment in social network Flux at best an irrelevancy and at worst a mess?
• Why is Viacom's MTV, after 13 years of trying, incapable of running an online music service anyone wants to use?

None of the invited reporters, as best we can tell, are film critics. Instead, they cover technology and business. Here's my bet: Most will show up, if only to get facetime with Viacom's CEO, who rarely makes it to northern California. But if Viacom really wanted to offer local hacks a good time, Zweig should have invited Dauman's son, Philippe Jr. For one thing, Philippe Dauman Jr. works at Google, which means he'd have an interesting perspective on the copyright dispute. And the kid knows how to party. Heck, if Junior shows up, we'll skip the movie and go wherever he leads us. We hang out with journalists far too often, and we're sure he's more fun than the lot who'll show up to the screening.

• Viacom's favorite tech reporters:
• Miguel Helft, New York Times
• Elinor Mills, CNET
• Owen Thomas, Valleywag
• Jackson West, Valleywag
• Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires
• Joe Garofoli, San Francisco Chronicle
• Jessica Guynn, Los Angeles Times
• Rob Hof, BusinessWeek
• Mark Hachman, Ziff-Davis
• John Paczkowski, AllThingsD
• Mark Glaser, PBS
• Peter Burrows, BusinessWeek
• Eric Auchard, Reuters
• Liz Gannes, GigaOm
• Brad Stone, New York Times
• Matt Richtel, New York Times
• Vindu Goel, San Jose Mercury News
• Eric Savitz, Barrons
• Antone Gonsalves, InformationWeek
• Tom Claburn, CMP
• George Anders, Wall Street Journal
• Steve Johnson, San Jose Mercury News

We come at Joost or other platforms from the point of view that we cannot predict—nor did we in that case or any other case—predict which ones are going to be hugely successful, moderately successful, which won't work.

Dauman Jr.'s got his dad's Park Avenue pad in which to throw parties. According to people who have attended, they're the kind of snorting-lines-off-models'-behinds bacchanalia we never get invited to with lots of girls, boys, boys and girls. We've also heard he goes out with a professional dominatrix. How does he fit all this into his schedule? Unlike us, he doesn't waste time wishing he was Philippe Dauman Jr.